'Land of opportunity?' Apparently not for some

How far has the US fallen in recent years? One yardstick is in the number of second generation immigrants returning to the country of their parent's birth for opportunities that they can't find here.New York Times:

In growing numbers, experts say, highly educated children of immigrants to the United States are uprooting themselves and moving to their ancestral countries. They are embracing homelands that their parents once spurned but that are now economic powers.

Some, like Mr. Kapadia, had arrived in the United States as young children, becoming citizens, while others were born in the United States to immigrant parents.

Enterprising Americans have always sought opportunities abroad. But this new wave underscores the evolving nature of global migration, and the challenges to American economic supremacy and competitiveness.

In interviews, many of these Americans said they did not know how long they would live abroad; some said it was possible that they would remain expatriates for many years, if not for the rest of their lives.

Their decisions to leave have, in many cases, troubled their immigrant parents. Yet most said they had been pushed by the dismal hiring climate in the United States or pulled by prospects abroad.

"Markets are opening; people are coming up with ideas every day; there's so much opportunity to mold and create," said Mr. Kapadia, now a researcher at Gateway House, a new foreign-policy research organization in Mumbai. "People here are running much faster than the people in Washington."

This "trend" is nothing new in the sense that America has always been an extraordinarily mobile country with people moving in and out, back and forth by the millions. What makes this particular trend so worrisome is that it involves the kinds of immigrants that have powered American entrepreneurship for decades. It is becoming too difficult to start a business, to negotiate the myriad regulations and laws governing business creation - not to mention the highest corporate tax rate in the world and overregulation that has gotten much worse under the current administration.

Government's stranglehold on American business is costing us not only jobs, but talent as well.

How far has the US fallen in recent years? One yardstick is in the number of second generation immigrants returning to the country of their parent's birth for opportunities that they can't find here.

In growing numbers, experts say, highly educated children of immigrants to the United States are uprooting themselves and moving to their ancestral countries. They are embracing homelands that their parents once spurned but that are now economic powers.

Some, like Mr. Kapadia, had arrived in the United States as young children, becoming citizens, while others were born in the United States to immigrant parents.

Enterprising Americans have always sought opportunities abroad. But this new wave underscores the evolving nature of global migration, and the challenges to American economic supremacy and competitiveness.

In interviews, many of these Americans said they did not know how long they would live abroad; some said it was possible that they would remain expatriates for many years, if not for the rest of their lives.

Their decisions to leave have, in many cases, troubled their immigrant parents. Yet most said they had been pushed by the dismal hiring climate in the United States or pulled by prospects abroad.

"Markets are opening; people are coming up with ideas every day; there's so much opportunity to mold and create," said Mr. Kapadia, now a researcher at Gateway House, a new foreign-policy research organization in Mumbai. "People here are running much faster than the people in Washington."

This "trend" is nothing new in the sense that America has always been an extraordinarily mobile country with people moving in and out, back and forth by the millions. What makes this particular trend so worrisome is that it involves the kinds of immigrants that have powered American entrepreneurship for decades. It is becoming too difficult to start a business, to negotiate the myriad regulations and laws governing business creation - not to mention the highest corporate tax rate in the world and overregulation that has gotten much worse under the current administration.

Government's stranglehold on American business is costing us not only jobs, but talent as well.